


still skies as tomorrow quietly comes

by Graysworks



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Conversations, Drabble, F/M, Oneshot, also they're both a mess, author is in physical pain, in which Frank has a soft spot for Karen and the whole world knows it, post punisher season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-23 09:48:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17681132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graysworks/pseuds/Graysworks
Summary: Post punisher season one, Karen and Frank reconcile while the Kitchen goes to hell (ha), Matt walks a dangerous line, and everyone's trying to pick up their own life in tandem with the others. Long drives and psychoanalyses happen. Frank is infatuated.





	still skies as tomorrow quietly comes

**Author's Note:**

> *NOTE* I haven't watched literally anything past daredevil s1 and s2 and punisher s1, so this is solely written with no knowledge of canon beyond that point, lol. Just be warned. And no spoilers please thanks!!
> 
> title from the song by Birdy

Frank comes to slowly, then all at once, twitching awake in some sketchy RN’s apartment while she rifles through a crate of what could be antivenin and argues with a pair of voices he would know unconscious.

Ah, shit.

“Karen. Karen no- Karen, keep back-” Something heavy slaps the table beside Frank’s head. He flinches just to mess with her and keeps his eyes that way when a pounding headache reveals itself by the noise- god _damn_ , that’s a way to start the morning, or rather, night after a botched investigation that he can barely remember anyway. He tries to shake it out of his head; won’t do any good to throw his brain against his skull this early, but either they have something on his target or they have something on him, and ten minutes ain’t the worst concession in the world. “He blew our case wide _open_ , okay?” Bingo. “You can’t just- you can’t just hand the max security prisoner a ticket to his next victim and exp-”

“We can’t stop him and you know it,” she counters, harsh. Shit. “All we can do is lay out the facts.”

Frank snorts lightly and his lungs burn. “Missed you too, fire an’ brimstone.” There’s a pause. Lamplight laps at the backs of his eyes and he needs a beat to wonder if he’d made some miscalculation, if he’s slipping under the pull of some unnoticed drug after all or just losing time. Red’s working with her for a reason, maybe they all took the jab to heart; jesus _christ_ what has Frank’s life come to that he’s giving a shit about what a Devil takes away from some chance remark, some chance encounter, some chance mutual-friend-bullshit that never fails to amaze with its impeccable timing?

“Sorry, that was...” regret colors her tone enough that he winces for real this time, has to force his eyes open but not on her. “That was rude of me, uh, I shouldn’t have-” Ah fuck, christ. “-uh, jumped down your throat, it’s just, you’ve been out since-”

“Ah, don’t,” he shakes his head a bit, headache and all, “don’t do that, Page, you’re alrigh’. Hey,” he tips her chin up, company be damned, because they’ve been here before on an empty sidewalk beside the river and it’s second nature to let her have her way. “You’re alright.” More than alright. Red and gold in the dim and the city glow, files clutched between typewriter hands with busted knuckles on one, he wants to wonder what fight she's picking here but her face, Frank, look at her damn face. Instead his fingers close around that case and sink in, and sink in, and he rolls away knowing there’s a time and place for apologies like there’s a time and place to mourn how he wants to appreciate something grateful and kind; Karen Page, more than alright, who forces humility like she’ll drive everyone away if she doesn’t and who Frank spares a second glance before leaving. It’s a habit he can’t seem to shake. He takes his files and leaves, and she makes the others let him, and the passivity of it must be baffling.

A few heads roll the next week. Heads that may or may not belong to the prime asshole of their case (Karen’s case) roll, and Frank’s the one pulling strikes, bullets the holes and drug operations like stacks of dominoes the pins; by the time he finds a fight beside some rooftop swimming pool the joke seems lost in translation- though the scores are still settled and the win is still his. He walks out of that corporate fiasco and into the next, the next, always looking for the next. It’s not a life, but he doesn’t pretend it is. They understand; everyone understands and nobody wants to pretend it’s incomprehensible just like he doesn’t kid himself after coming to beside a bloody tub one morning, one nightmare later, blackout panicking the next thirty minutes approximately for something which no one pretends they want to level with. The hardest part of it all isn’t being alone, he insists every time he shoves his way out the door.

(The hardest part isn’t even pretending he is.)

Guts, brain matter, chunks of fat squish underfoot after a particularly nasty run-in with some local nutjob, and Frank somehow has time to wonder where it became second nature to scope out the nearest dumpster to ditch his civvies while walking the streets. One day he has the ludicrous vision of throwing himself in and getting a free ride to some ocean barge thats sole purpose is to pollute the very earth which spewed its creators forth, he pauses the briefest moment to eye the spray-painted abomination, and decides it’s been too long since he’s slept again. The target of the week is still out there somewhere. Frank’s been grasping at leads- but the farther the case gets away from him, the farther does the violence. The farther the violence gets away from him, the more he pushes Page to do the same thing.

She feels the eyes sometimes. It’s almost like the same way Red knows when Frank is there blind, and strange to say the least, so he keeps out of sight more than he doesn’t and tries to turn off that voice saying she’s onto him. Girl’s a journalist now, is bound to have developed that habit of always looking over her shoulder though Frank regrets as much, watching lamplight paint her hair orange through a haze of smoke, wavering air from the heat, caught off guard by how ridiculously frustrating it is to see her in the middle of a mess yet again. They parted on the best terms he’s laid down in years. She’s indescribable and he’s afraid for that spark of life.

The backdrop of flames doesn’t suit. Frank turns and stows his gun and takes his win, and doesn’t look back.

The avoidance cycle lasts two instances later; once at a roof-top shooting that she’s tied up with on account of Red, somehow, and the next in an old, stone trimmed, body-filled library that’s nearly worse than a pile of dead ones on that gritty concrete stuff. He’s looking through records for a very bad person who made a very hasty exit from any files Frank can get his hands on and much as he’s ready to put the guy six feet under, he needs at least a scrap of reason to believe anonymous tips- preferably though, the ones he doesn’t have to run into a certain harried looking blonde to get, a crusade he hates himself for rethinking once she makes a beeline straight for the folder he’s been looking for. Fuck. Fuck, and if it isn’t ironic that now he’ll have to resort to beating the shit out of some lowlife to get the same info. He wonders while he’s leaving if she would’ve laughed at that.

Somewhere close to making up his mind, he punches harder and puts it out like the shitbag that’s just given him what he needs.

(But God, she’s got a laugh.)

Articles keep rolling out. He’s making a statement, and he’s making a mess. Newer, dirtier cops recite lines on his profile, lay down guidelines for safety that only serve to rile up the public more but they know what they’re doing, inciting panic; paranoia pays off, and Frank is their currency. He collects newspapers only to stuff them between the teeth of the lowest of the low that he comes across while tracking a ghost story, a mild kind of _fuck you_ to the press, but then someone tells him that Page has four officers on her solely because of the severe backlash to not what she’s writing but what everyone else is, and he gives it up. People shouldn’t be afraid to say what they say, even if it’s only to call him a monster, psychopath, the punisher. He doesn’t fight to silence anyone and he tells Page as much the next time they happen to cross paths. It’s in a sparsely-filled square this time, gray and stone and drab. She pulls her jacket tighter around herself, shakes her head. “You do- realize how hypocritical that sounds, right?”

He fights a smile- it’s nothing less than expected, but, “thought you were taking yourself outta this fight, Page. What d’you want me to say; whoops, shouldn’t have bashed the skull of that abuser, that murderer, hey where does it end anyway-”

“It ends when someone decides you aren’t worth the shock value anymore, and either looks to hire or puts a hit out, I mean,” she presses a hand to her forehead and makes a face like she’s biting her cheek, “look at Rawlins, Russo, come on, we both know how it _ends_. The question is how much damage you’ll get in before then.” That twitch in her jaw is new. She’s after something and for a minute, Frank can’t parse it out.

“What’s eating you, Page?”

“This case the Devil’s working.” Her response is immediate and that’s also new; Frank wouldn’t push any harder to figure out what’s changed but it’s obvious from how she twists her hands. Typewriter hands. Breakable, breakable. “He’s become- obsessed, volatile, and I’m- afraid he’s slipping into a place he won’t come back from. It’s, uh,” she clears her throat, “it’s bad news when the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen starts using the Punisher’s methods. And I think we both know why.” Frank studies the flit of her eyes from one of his to the other, absorbed, thinking, asking himself if he’d step in when anyone else was asking and looking away when he figures the answer. There are too many people in the square. It’s noon. He leaves his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, but only because he’s got a weapon in both of them.

“Yeah, well, who’s the hypocrite now, Page.” It’s less a jab than a fact, but she’s always been more concerned with the latter anyway and they both realize when it pulls a laugh from her. “What?”

“Nothing. God, it’s just- god. Sometimes I have no idea what’s going on in your head and then you say something like that. Like- it’s not a big deal.”

“Maybe it isn’t.”

“Any of it?”

His mouth opens on the automatic response, but the way she gives a little head shake and taps her fingers on the strap of her bag, feet shifting, eyes squinting in that distinctly Karen-Page squint is enough to give him pause. Frank doesn’t know what she’s trying to prove, if anything, but he knows what that look is doing to his especially Karen-Page shaped walls and it’s not going to do anyone a bit of good if they come down; unfortunately though in the time that it takes to remember this, she takes his un-busted arm of the week and scribbles out an address in blue pen, mouth curved up at the edge and much too self-satisfied for Frank to feel like he’s not being cheated out of something. God, he’s missed her. He brings her hand up to his mouth and kisses the back of it and tries not to think, and tries not to give away a smile when she laughs again, and leaves before neither of them wants to.

Fire and brimstone, he repeats to himself later when it’s night, when it’s cold, when his head’s on as straight as it’s going to be and all he has to think about while he waits out the Devil is how easy it was for her to take his arm. He’s killed people with that limb, _just_ that limb. Christ, he’s killed people with just that elbow, and trying to imagine the last time someone ignored it pries open some tight-locked box inside his chest, replays images in a bizarre juxtaposition over her parting glance, lingering warmth. No. No, no, he scrubs the numbers and letters on the leg of his pants and gets up from where he’s been sitting against a grated power box, paces the length of the water tower walk twice and then once again while he breathes in the city below. Frank closes his eyes and sees Wilson’s arm around Karen’s throat. He swears and sees her on the floor six inches away from him, _because_ of him, coming back again like none of it mattered.

It’s the closest ones that hurt you the worst, he told her once, or some iteration of it. The Devil shows up before he gets any more consumed by speculation, though, and Frank has to shake the thoughts away like smoke.

Pulling info out of Red is like pulling teeth. He shoots questions back and forth at Frank for a while, spells a warning about Karen in blaring lights that Frank would have to be a dumbass not to catch, evades several topics like he’s paid for it. Maybe he is. There’s a nagging when it comes to him that Frank still hasn’t combed out, something with the voice, but eventually they find some middle ground on working the case that sends the former home in a defeated grumble of a goodbye. Frank supposes it’s a good sign that he even gets one. After taking the decision and leaving, he tries not to regret getting involved any more than he already does.

The end result is a disaster, but that was to be expected. Bodies hit the restaurant floor, go strewn over the counter, the tables and chairs and crash through half-wall windows that flicker red once the place starts to go up. It’s a field day for the police and the press, and it gets neither of them any closer to their respective targets after screaming each other out on the roof afterward; Red going on about doing this for his family and his honor and Frank knows it’s bullshit by the same way he knows Red is trying to convince himself. There’s blood in his teeth. His shouting is hoarse. He can’t have taken a shower before the past three days.

For a second, Frank just about pities him.

They pursue the lead that got away from them for another week or so. Everything turns up blanks except one interrogation that Frank leads after catching some hint of his target’s intervention from their suspect. He shoves a knife through the bastard’s palm and goes a bit blind from rage when all it gets is a laugh and a snappish taunt to Red about some chick, but bits of the truth come out slowly, along with his fingernails and a few molars that nearly catch Frank’s un-busted hand of the week and Red’s intervening grab to keep them at a distance- because apparently that’s where he draws the line after their last fiasco of a get-together. Frank doesn’t know the point of it when the plan is to get rid of him anyway, at least on his part.

Several snapped fingers and a name slipping from bloody lips later, they’re attacked. Neither saw it coming and that’s bad, that’s _bad_ but Frank has a job to do and hell to pay if he loses the Devil on his watch, so they claw their way out of the facility like- well, like they’d die otherwise. And they would.

By the time everyone’s gathered around the table -or in this case, Sketchy RN’s collection of dug up hospital files strewn out over peeling vinyl floorboard- Frank and Red are sporting a bitchin’ collection of bruises and attempted guttings between the two of them, and nobody has a clue how their cases are coming together anymore. The other attorney is suspiciously present. Page shows up twenty minutes late with takeout clutched in one hand (typewriter hand) but doesn’t say much throughout the process; Frank supposes they’ve all been through the wringer recently and more now that the new D.A.’s been facing an unexpected flood of Fisk’s new cronies, or something similar to what the Devil’s been arguing with the attorney on for several minutes too long for any of it to be a question anymore. Frank’s almost got his damn stitches finished by the time they move on, and the nurse has almost quit giving him the most disapproving look he thinks anyone who hasn’t been dead in the next hour has given him in years. She can glare all she wants in the end. She’s doing enough just letting a pair of wanted criminals into her worryingly unarmored apartment.

Frank gets up for water about eighty percent of the argument through, and it blindsides him again, that thing, inside his chest, wrenching his lungs out and holding them hostage until he realizes he’s been standing at a running sink for minutes and minutes. He can’t breathe (he can), his head is static and his lips are numb (too late, called out too late) and the confused rush of adrenaline locks the joints in his body like a round into the chamber. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, timing fucked up, setting fucked up though there’s never a better place for every part of him to pack into a bundle of obsessive self-loathing, breathe, where’s the trigger, _breathe_. It takes a handful of water to the face and another stretch of pulling himself back to fight it down. This is why he doesn’t work well with others, he thinks as they’re all calling it a night and packing up- but the stitches hold.

At least the goddamn stitches hold.

Karen asks for a ride and he knows it’s only an excuse for her to get the report on Red’s behavior, but somehow Frank can’t find it in himself to care. Anyway, he owes her from wrecking that car and it’s late; they drive for a long time without speaking, the city passes in a blur of yellows and greens, and the mundane-ness of it seems surreal like everything with her is, has to be, fire and brimstone and a blanket understanding that both of them are on different sides of some unspoken fight. Frank doesn’t like that. Silence means something when it’s from her, but hesitation isn’t driving this invisible shield she’s got up.

“Something happen?” he asks a while in, and her brows go up, and he doesn’t think she even realizes. “Yeah, I got that. Jus’ wondering if I need to ditch the rest of my tank before we finally get somewhere. You hungry?”

“Frank, it’s three AM.”

“Not hearing a no.”

“You never do.”

He settles back in the drivers seat, response sitting on his tongue but falling flat in the face of her quiet resignation. “Listen, let’s cut the shit with this moral dilemma, Page, it ain’t getting anywhere. You said it yourself- can’t stop me, can’t stop the damn Devil, just let it be and take cover, right?”

“That’s not what I,” she starts, “god, I- didn’t want to get into this again. It’s different.” At his disbelieving laugh, she persists, arguing with the glove-compartment, the stretch of road, every piece of the dash like she doesn’t want to look at him. “It is. Maybe I can’t pull you back from that ledge anymore, but you can be damn sure I’m doing everything I can to pull- _him_ back, okay? Whatever reservations I have about-”

“He deserve that?”

“...what?”

“He deserve that,” Frank repeats, “Red, deserve that fight, cause see- I don’t know that he does. It’s him, isn’t it?” She squints again like she doesn’t follow, god, she’s an open book and it’s hard to imagine the Devil as someone so dense as to not do his reading. “That guy. The one you gotta tear up a little, it is, huh? Well lemme tell you something- people like that walk a line like they’ve got poles strapped to their damned feet, Karen, and sooner or later those toothpick-excuses for a cause give out. Why’d you think he’s starting to crack all of a sudden?”

“He’s been- through a lot,” she says, and then squares her shoulders like she knows how much bullshit that is. “Look, it’s not just- him, I know, but, but out of- it’s just that he’s still to the right side of that line.” Her jaw works. She rubs her nose. “And I- and I owe it to him to keep him there.”

“Jesus, Page.”

“No, you don’t know him like I do, alright? You don’t know anyone half as-” she scrubs a hand over her eyes and pauses, pulls an inhale that becomes a breathy laugh after she lets it go, like all that steam has to go somewhere. “Forget it. You know, Schoonover was a stain on the human race in a lot of ways, but he was right about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You have to get inside everyone else’s head just to get out of your own.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s angry -is he?- and he laughs just because the emotions run similar and he’s at a loss; a loss, with Karen Page in the passenger’s seat, it shouldn’t be as much of a surprise as it is. He thinks back to how the first time he saw her, it was through a scope. He thinks back to the hospital. His grief, out of control, controlled now and worse, and worse when there’s a body count behind him and a smile-fighting Karen Page beside him, trying to prove something to them both and knowing it isn’t working. He wants to pull over, wants to rip the steering wheel from the dash. He wants to tell her how much his kids, his wife would’ve loved her. Oh, god. Oh, god.

They lapse into silence for the rest of the road. Frank doesn’t know where he’s going on forty miles left, several hours until sunrise, but Karen nods off somewhere around their seventh time past the park, and he knows they’re alright. Karen Page, more than alright. Karen Page; curled into his passenger seat, yellow and green-lit from the city that’ll be on her like a wolf to rabbit tomorrow, dark circles under her eyes, asleep because she wouldn’t ask him to drop her off for what feels like the world. She shifts and her eyes move under their lids. Frank drives and tries to hear the ‘no’ in the quiet.

(He can’t. Maybe it’s what worries him more.)

They pull up to her apartment building and she’s still asleep. Frank would move her, would move anyone else, but he can’t pry his hands from the wheel and it doesn’t take long for her to blink awake again, straighten up with a long exhale.

“G’night, Karen,” he says, because he has to say something- because he has to drag his mind away from the elevator, how it was an unconscious thing to lean close, how there’s no blood between them now and no guns after them. When she squeezes his arm and looks at him, really looks at him like she’s on the verge of a question, or a hug, or anything Karen Page would be on the verge of in Frank Castle’s car, he doesn’t pretend they aren’t thinking back to the same fight. This isn’t one, he thinks, when her eyes are closing and her head’s pressing against his with a little _thunk_ that makes them both huff out a little echo of matching laughs. This isn’t one.

“Goodnight, Frank,” she says. He wants to cup her cheek in one hand. He wants to run his fingers through her hair. His palms are frozen to the wheel, still.

She moves away, and leaves, and he leaves too.

Distance is an easy thing for Frank. He regrets it sometimes, reminds himself of it at other times, but it’s an objective truth. For Red- not so much. This is of course evident by the fact that he keeps interfering, and can’t seem to settle on one side or the other; the law is one thing, he admits after a string of underground deals blowing up in his face, but it’s hard to keep washing the blood from the blade day in and day out and defend the letter that allows for corrupt enforcement within its margins. Frank doesn’t know why he needs to know why Red is telling him this until the realization comes, striking, that not only is he getting used to the little shit but he’s kept something of an unconscious file on the things Page says that are the same. He realizes that he had it wrong. Page isn’t just pulling the Devil back from emulating Frank’s ideology- she’s pulling him back from imitating her _own_.

And she’s failing. God damn.

Distance, he reminds himself, periodically, going through busy work like there’s something to show for it in the end. Teaming with the Devil is still a rare occasion, but crime is never, and it swamps the city like flies swarming over something rotted and sick. It’s not a life, but it’s work. It’s not business- just _work_. More articles roll out. He lies low for a week. Crazy shithead of the month, as none of the papers proclaim in those terms, manifests as a nobody civilian abducting kids and slipping cuffs, and that becomes enough talk of the town that Frank resurfaces only to gun down the pig like he deserves and then disappear into watchful obscurity again. There’s another case just like it after a few days. Then another. Eventually he finds himself in some underground ring trying to ID the latest perp and coming up empty. It’s hard to tell what the warehouse is even for, here; there’s fight cages and shelves of furniture and crates and crates of product stacked to the ceilings, dumb kids getting stoned on the ground floor and slightly smarter ones doing the same thing from the overlooking survey room. Someone is blasting shitty music in the corner. Most of the crowd is here to move shit around or throw money at who’s supposed to win what fight, and it gets louder as the place gets fuller, as the air thickens across the place with the smell of sweat, fumes, suffocating.

Frank takes one step outside and then he’s seizing up, breath coming fast enough to blindside him. God knows what the trigger was, but all he can do is press up back against the cold, metal sheet wall, count the dots of the city line that blur together with the mist and the smog and his mind running faster than an engine. Breathe, breathe.

It lasts forever. He can’t stand it.

Curtis doesn’t seem surprised when he shows up later in the day, feeling like shit and looking like it too from the expression crossing his friend’s face on first sight. They take a seat and talk, and Frank scrubs at his face, and can’t get the image of Karen with a gun to her head out of his mind, and his family- _christ_ , he told Leiberman that she was _family_.

“I wish I could say that you doing what you do is what’s endangering people,” Curtis says, flat truth in that way only he could lay it out, “but it’s a lie and we know it. Your friend seems like the kind of person who can and will pick her own fights, but that’s not on you, Frank.”

He taps his thumbs against his folded hands. “Not exactly what I wanted to hear, Curt.”

Curtis laughs and sets his mug on the chair beside him. “I know. Figured I’d say it anyway. Look, we’ve all got our regrets. Maybe you’ve hurt this person, maybe you’re worried for the right reasons, but you gotta let people live, Frank. You gotta let _yourself_ live. Otherwise-” he spreads out a palm, mouth pulling down like a silent shrug. “What did we fight for anyway?”

He carries the question home with him, through a cold shower and can of corn and five straight minutes of staring at his burn phone that he knows no one will call. Bullshit. God, it’s such bullshit that it matters so much. Karen would pick up, he tells himself before throwing himself onto a disheveled mattress and calling it a night- she’d pick up, and maybe it’s why he doesn’t call. There’s not a doubt in his mind that Madani would be tracking lines on either of their ends, and it’s a hell of an excuse but he feels like shit for using it all the same, no matter the good terms _they_ parted with, too. Honor among thieves, and all that. Well, among a murderer and a journalist and the agent investigating with highly illegal methods- but the technicalities can be hammered out. Karen would laugh at that one. Frank shoves his pillow over his head and laughs too, swearing.

An hour later, it’s just before sunrise, and he’s pulling up to the riverfront beside her silhouette, black against the still-lightening sky. They must make small talk for the entire damn sunrise. Her hair strays over her face, but Frank moves it away before she gets there first, thinking about no blood and no guns and no fanfare; just the way he could listen to her all day, just this one, good thing. She’s everything right in a gray world. She’s- bright eyes and stubborn grins, his reason for still being awake after a thirty-hour job, asking him to coffee like she knows he’ll say no and Frank should, but he can’t. He takes his hand away and says, “maybe, Karen. I just- you remember Wilson, you know I can’t keep takin’ chances cause it- it almost got you _killed_ -”

“And maybe it will one day,” she interrupts, blunt as ever, but quiet. “Alright? Frank? But there are a hundred more Lewis Wilsons out there and you know that better than anyone. Look, if I have to go through a hundred more threats, investigations- you know I will, you know that- that at least if I go down, it’s doing something right- something I love, for the people I-” her voice drops out. He has the split second to think, randomly, that his heart’s doing the same damn thing beneath ribs cracked a dozen times over, and she shifts on her feet, brows drawing together. He ducks back into her line of sight on habit. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but it’s there.

“Hey, hey.” He takes her by the shoulders. “Hey, look at me. I got that. Karen, I got that. _Karen_.”

“Look, if you came here to let me down then just-” her voice breaks, and she doesn’t try to start again. Frank cups her face in both hands. He kisses her. She curls her fingers into his jacket and slides a palm to the back of his head. The city turns around them. The sky gets brighter by the second. Frank Castle tells Karen Page that she’s his family, the only way he knows how, and sifts his fingers through her hair and tucks his nose against her cheek and tells her again, in words this time. She nods against him and laughs- a little breathless thing, hands unable to settle on his shoulders, his face, the back of his head, like there’s too much love in her to figure out where to give it away. Heat stings the backs of Frank’s eyes.

The hardest part wasn’t pretending he was alone- it was having so much to lose that he’d convinced himself he had nothing. Karen gets it in a way no one else ever might. She was everything good about the past, everything better about the present and twice as precious as all of it that Frank feels like an idiot for not realizing sooner.

Karen is his after.

And Frank holds onto her with both hands, and holds her, and holds.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a mess  
> love these fuckin dorks


End file.
